'The Truth About Charlie' can't hold a candle to the original

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, October 24, 2002

Mark Wahlberg plays a mysterious stranger who woos a chic but clueless young widow (Thandie Newton) in order to get at her crooked late husband's hidden loot.

Mark Wahlberg plays a mysterious stranger who woos a chic but clueless young widow (Thandie Newton) in order to get at her crooked late husband's hidden loot.

'The Truth About Charlie' can't hold a candle to the original

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

Stanley Donen's 1963 Hitchcockesque thriller-comedy "Charade" was no masterpiece but it's remembered as one of its era's more elegant entertainments chiefly off the potent chemistry and sparkling repartee of its stars, Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn.

To its credit, Jonathan Demme's remake, "The Truth About Charlie," tries hard to re-create this old-school sophistication, even while he's loaded it with contemporary filmmaking embellishments and otherwise strived to adjust the flow for a modern audience.

The result has its moments, and it certainly makes the most of its Paris setting, but it doesn't have the star power to sustain its momentum,

gets bogged down in its plot mechanics, and finally comes across as a fairly weak retooling.

Latest Entertainment Videos

Adhering very closely to Peter Stone's original screenplay, it's the story of a chic but clueless young woman (Thandie Newton) who becomes the center of attention when her husband of three months, the Charlie of the title, is murdered in the opening scene.

Unbeknownst to her, Charlie was a crook who left an illicit fortune somewhere in his effects. The old gang he double-crossed wants it, and so does the U.S. government, the French police and a mysterious fellow (Mark Wahlberg) who comes out of nowhere to help -- and woo -- her.

As this premise sets off a stampede of comic deceptions and manipulations, the movie's bright spot is Newton: She has all the charm, self-effacing wit and dingie sense of helplessness the part requires. In a better movie, this could have been a huge star-making role.

Demme has infused the proceedings with an appealing nostalgia not just for vintage Hollywood comedy but for the Paris of the '60s New Wave, peppering his scenes with the faces of Agnes Varda, Anna Karina and Charles Aznavour (who appears as himself in a fantasy sequence).

But many of his choices seem poor: His heavies are lackluster (the original had James Coburn, Walter Matthau and George Kennedy); what was already a confusing plot line has been made even more labored; and some of the most acerbic dialogue of the Stone script has been eliminated.

And there's no getting around the fact that Wahlberg can't begin to hold up his half of the marquee. A likable-enough actor with a certain aw-shucks appeal, he's just way over his head in a project that asks him to wear the shoes of Cary Grant.